H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (17 October 2018) – As interest rates rise, the venture-capital model pioneered by SoftBank and followed by the likes of Tencent is breaking down + The Woman They Turned Away who created many of technologies that we use on a daily basis

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (17 October 2018) – As interest rates rise, the venture-capital model pioneered by SoftBank and followed by the likes of Tencent is breaking down + The Woman They Turned Away who created many of technologies that we use on a daily basis

Companies

• Chipmaker spending cuts hurt equipment supplier Disco (Nikkei)
• Hamamatsu develops bright supercontinuum source; Japanese photonics giant delivers stable source equivalent to xenon lamps; allows high-precision measurements. (Optics)
• WiseTech buys Sydney company SmartFreight for $55 million (AFR)

BATTSS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Softbank, Samsung

• Asia’s Technology Bear Isn’t Ready to Hibernate; As interest rates rise, the venture-capital model pioneered by SoftBank and followed by the likes of Tencent is breaking down. (Bloomberg)
• Singapore e-wallet NetsPay in talks with Tencent’s WeChat Pay for cross-border payments (SCMP); WeChat Pay, China’s Popular Payment Tool, Lands in U.S. (Barron’s)
• Samsung Electronics buys network analysis firm Zhilabs in 5G push (Reuters)
• Softbank pushes link-ups as insurance strategy takes shape (Reuters)

FAANNMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Netflix, Microsoft, Google

• Facebook Accused of Hiding Inflated Ad Metrics Back in 2015 (Bloomberg)
• Amazon Doles Out Freebies to Juice Sales of Its Own Brands; Critics say some customer reviews disadvantage third-party merchants and could displease European regulators. (Bloomberg)
• Amazon likely to buy 7-8 percent stake in India’s Future Retail – TV (Reuters)
• Amazon’s Next Stop May Be Brazil Drugstores, Morgan Stanley Says (Bloomberg)
• Netflix Soars After Blistering Subscriber Growth Restores Faith (Bloomberg); Netflix Spoiled Us Rotten; Consumers don’t want ads and don’t want to pay up for TV. (Bloomberg); Netflix is online video’s Walmart, and its Tiffany (Reuters)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

• IT leasing and corporate SaaS platform Edianzu scored USD 60 million Series D funding; In China, IT equipment leasing service has a market penetration of only 4.9%. (KRA)
• China’s Huawei Takes Aim at Qualcomm, Nvidia With New AI Chips (Bloomberg)
• Chinese electric car makers, nurtured by state, now look for way out of glut (Reuters)
• China’s P2P lenders say regulation will cause industry collapse; Executives expect lender numbers to drop from more than 1,500 to as few as 50 (FT)
• Firms offer a glimpse of future business models at CEATEC, Japan’s biggest electronics trade show (Japan Times) 

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

• Is Uber worth as much as Alibaba? (AFR); Uber considers minority-stake investors for self-driving car unit; Ride-hailing group faces rising cost pressures ahead of IPO (FT); Uber Valued at $120 Billion in an IPO? Maybe (Bloomberg)
• Instacart Continues Funding Spree, Raises $600 Million; The grocery-delivery startup bagged nearly $1 billion from investors this year. (Bloomberg)
• Reddit CEO Says Tech Scandals Proved Him Right on User Data (Bloomberg)
• Adobe Characterizer turns you into an animated drawing with the power of AI (TNW)
• Postmates Interviews Banks for IPO; Food-delivery service is likely to go public in first half of 2019 (WSJ)
• ‘We’re Not Google’ Won’t Cut It for TomTom; It wants to be the go-to provider of high-definition maps for autonomous cars. But TomTom is lacking direction and losing customers. (Bloomberg)

Life

• The Woman They Turned Away who created many of technologies that we use on a daily basis (Medium)
• The “Get Rich Slow” Exit Strategy (Hackernoon)